Unfiltered: Carlton captain Patrick Cripps opens up on lowest point of his career

Carlton captain Patrick Cripps has opened up on the lowest point of his career and how he turned it around.

Cripps was always destined for greatness after a brilliant start to his career that included becoming the second-youngest best and fairest winner in club history.

He quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the best midfielders in the competition, winning the AFLPA MVP award in 2019 and being named co-captain of Carlton.

But then it all went downhill.

“2020 and 2021 were the hardest years of my life, probably more performance, I look back on it and probably my biggest growth came from those years as well,” Cripps tells Hamish McLachlan on Unfiltered.

“I found that really tough from a team, because we couldn’t get the way we wanted them to go, that’s when the review happened as well.

“My first six years went in a pretty upwards trend, individually, I was always levelling up and getting better, and then I probably had two sort of quieter years and that was probably the first time I reckon as a player I started losing a little bit of confidence.”

Unfiltered with Patrick Cripps, airs 9.30pm Wednesday following The Front Bar on Seven and 7plus Sport.

After two lean years by his lofty standards, Cripps worked hard on himself with an intense three-month plan to improve his fitness.

“I remember the end of 2021 that was the year I really went to work on all the stuff I practiced and had an off season where I got as fit as I could,” he said.

“I remember I sat down with Andrew Russell and mapped out a three-month plan when I went back to Perth and every day I knew exactly what I was doing for three months, I reckon even to what I ate, I was so locked in, which I was probably obsessed with at the time but I knew I had to bounce out of this and I knew I could.

“I had my best probably 10-12 week patch at the start of 2022, I had this practice match here at Carlton and I hadn’t felt this for two years and I just knew I was going to go on a run of good form, just this confidence, you can’t describe it.”

The hard work in that off-season paid off.

Cripps took his game to another level, winning the 2022 Brownlow Medal in a brilliant individual season.

But while he has won plenty of individual accolades, team success has so far eluded him.

The Blues made a preliminary final in 2023 and the finals again the following season, but they are the only finals series Cripps has played in across his glittering career.

“I look back on every challenge I’ve had now and everyone is like you’ve had a lot of lean years at Carlton, would you change it? I wouldn’t change it because I’ve learnt so much from it, and the power of actually building something from the ground up, for me is so rewarding,” he said.

“Last year was probably a real challenging year for myself and the team mentally because it was the first year ... it’s always been an upwards trend but you have little blips, and now I’m in this stage where there’s this excitement where you bring a lot of new people in, there is still a lot of stability from a lot of senior players so it’s a bit of an unknown but I still feel like there’s a lot of growth so we can still make an upwards trend, so that’s where the next 8-10 weeks is a bit of the unknown but that’s what really excites me as a leader and a player.”